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"Appellate Review of Sentencing Policy Decisions after Kimbrough"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this new piece on SSRN by Carissa Byrne Hessick.  Here is the abstract: In Kimbrough v. United States the U.S. Supreme Court addressed a question left open in United States v. Booker: whether to permit district courts to make sentencing decisions based on a policy disagreement with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.  The Booker Court, in order to avoid a Sixth Amendment jury right problem inherent in mandatory sentencing regimes, had held that the Guidelines were purely "advisory" and that district courts had discretion to sentence outside the ranges prescribed by the Guidelines.  Ultimately, the Kimbrough Court held that district courts could sentence outside the advisory Guideline range based solely on a policy disagreement with the Guidelines, as opposed to limiting judicial discretion to case-specific criteria...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on July 19, 2009 (boomark / email).